The era of the War on Terror has necessitated a security imagination that both justifies a gigant... more The era of the War on Terror has necessitated a security imagination that both justifies a gigantic national security state and provides security personnel with the scenarios needed to develop security practices and policies. While scholars have studied the ways in which cultural products are influenced by national security agencies, we seek to highlight the complementarity in the media-state nexus and the part played by the culture industry in furnishing the security establishment with the cultural imagination needed to meet its goals. Such a dialectical approach has the advantage of charting the flow of culture in multiple directions in order to develop a holistic understanding of how a national security imagination is mobilized. In particular, we focus on the show Homeland to explore the ways in which the workings of the national-security state under Obama have been naturalized through the activities of a new and rebranded CIA. We set out to contribute to the relatively small bod...
This article is about how national security culture sets out, in raced, gendered, and classed ter... more This article is about how national security culture sets out, in raced, gendered, and classed terms, to prepare the U.S. public to take up their role as citizens of empire. The cultural imagination of national security, I argue, is shaped both by the national security state and the media industry. Drawing on archival material, I offer a contextual analysis of key national security visual texts in two periods—the early Cold War era and the Obama phase of the War on Terror. A comparative analysis of the two periods shows that while Cold War practices inform the War on Terror, there are also discontinuities. A key difference is the inclusion of women and people of color within War on Terror imperial citizenship, inflected by the logic of a neoliberal form of feminism and multiculturalism. I argue that such inclusion is not positive and urge scholars to combine an intersectional analysis of identity with a structural critique of neoliberal imperialism.
The 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike highlighted the conflict of interests between corpora... more The 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike highlighted the conflict of interests between corporations and their employees, challenging the notion that the 1990s economic recovery had benefited all Americans equally. Television coverage of this strike, however, failed to reflect the class nature of this conflict. Instead, it framed the strike in nationalist terms and projected the interests of business onto the nation by constructing a harmonious national community with shared goals. Through a textual analysis of 269 news reports on ABC, CBS, and NBC, this article discusses the economic and social components of the “nationalist antistrike narrative.” Economically, this narrative constructs the viewer as a middle-class consumer and invites the audience to identify with UPS. Socially, it offers mechanisms of corporate and national conflict resolution based on idealized nuclear family relations. This article argues that the narrative’s logic stems from the institutional structure of Am...
Since the events of 9/11, the range of debate on issues pertaining to Muslims or Islam has narrow... more Since the events of 9/11, the range of debate on issues pertaining to Muslims or Islam has narrowed to a point where Orientalist modes of thought are once again dominant. The clash of civilizations thesis eschewed by the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, was ...
The oppression of Afghan women by fundamentalist groups was barely addressed by the corporate med... more The oppression of Afghan women by fundamentalist groups was barely addressed by the corporate media until it proved rhetorically useful for US elites to argue for military intervention as a means to liberate the women of that country. This article critically interrogates this claim, and analyzes media coverage of Afghan women before and after the US invasion on 7 October 2001. First, we present an overview of conflicts in Afghanistan, focusing on the US's economic and strategic interests in the region, and its role in ...
The era of the War on Terror has necessitated a security imagination that both justifies a gigant... more The era of the War on Terror has necessitated a security imagination that both justifies a gigantic national security state and provides security personnel with the scenarios needed to develop security practices and policies. While scholars have studied the ways in which cultural products are influenced by national security agencies, we seek to highlight the complementarity in the media-state nexus and the part played by the culture industry in furnishing the security establishment with the cultural imagination needed to meet its goals. Such a dialectical approach has the advantage of charting the flow of culture in multiple directions in order to develop a holistic understanding of how a national security imagination is mobilized. In particular, we focus on the show Homeland to explore the ways in which the workings of the national-security state under Obama have been naturalized through the activities of a new and rebranded CIA. We set out to contribute to the relatively small bod...
This article is about how national security culture sets out, in raced, gendered, and classed ter... more This article is about how national security culture sets out, in raced, gendered, and classed terms, to prepare the U.S. public to take up their role as citizens of empire. The cultural imagination of national security, I argue, is shaped both by the national security state and the media industry. Drawing on archival material, I offer a contextual analysis of key national security visual texts in two periods—the early Cold War era and the Obama phase of the War on Terror. A comparative analysis of the two periods shows that while Cold War practices inform the War on Terror, there are also discontinuities. A key difference is the inclusion of women and people of color within War on Terror imperial citizenship, inflected by the logic of a neoliberal form of feminism and multiculturalism. I argue that such inclusion is not positive and urge scholars to combine an intersectional analysis of identity with a structural critique of neoliberal imperialism.
The 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike highlighted the conflict of interests between corpora... more The 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike highlighted the conflict of interests between corporations and their employees, challenging the notion that the 1990s economic recovery had benefited all Americans equally. Television coverage of this strike, however, failed to reflect the class nature of this conflict. Instead, it framed the strike in nationalist terms and projected the interests of business onto the nation by constructing a harmonious national community with shared goals. Through a textual analysis of 269 news reports on ABC, CBS, and NBC, this article discusses the economic and social components of the “nationalist antistrike narrative.” Economically, this narrative constructs the viewer as a middle-class consumer and invites the audience to identify with UPS. Socially, it offers mechanisms of corporate and national conflict resolution based on idealized nuclear family relations. This article argues that the narrative’s logic stems from the institutional structure of Am...
Since the events of 9/11, the range of debate on issues pertaining to Muslims or Islam has narrow... more Since the events of 9/11, the range of debate on issues pertaining to Muslims or Islam has narrowed to a point where Orientalist modes of thought are once again dominant. The clash of civilizations thesis eschewed by the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, was ...
The oppression of Afghan women by fundamentalist groups was barely addressed by the corporate med... more The oppression of Afghan women by fundamentalist groups was barely addressed by the corporate media until it proved rhetorically useful for US elites to argue for military intervention as a means to liberate the women of that country. This article critically interrogates this claim, and analyzes media coverage of Afghan women before and after the US invasion on 7 October 2001. First, we present an overview of conflicts in Afghanistan, focusing on the US's economic and strategic interests in the region, and its role in ...
Uploads
Papers by Deepa Kumar